Conrad III

Conrad III, seal, 12th century; in the Bayerisches National Museum, MunichCourtesy of the Bayerisches National Museum, Munich; photograph, Foto Marburg

Conrad III, (born 1093—died Feb. 15, 1152, Bamberg, Ger., Holy Roman Empire), German king from 1138 to 1152, the first king of the Hohenstaufen family.

The son of Frederick I, duke of Swabia, and grandson of Emperor Henry IV, Conrad was appointed duke of Franconia by his uncle, Emperor Henry V, in 1115. In 1116, with his elder brother Frederick II, duke of Swabia, he was left by Henry as regent of Germany. When the Emperor died in 1125 the electors, rejecting the hereditary principle, chose Lothar, duke of Saxony, to succeed him. By the end of the year Frederick and Conrad were in revolt; on Dec. 18, 1127, Conrad was elected antiking at Nürnberg and in June 1128 was crowned king of Italy at Monza. Returning to Germany in 1132, he fought Lothar until 1135, when he submitted, was pardoned, and recovered his estates.

After Lothar died (December 1137), the electors meeting at Coblenz under Albero of Trier chose Conrad as his successor (March 7, 1138) in the presence of the papal legate. Crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle six days later, he was acknowledged at Bamberg by several of the South German princes. Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria and Saxony, the son-in-law and heir of Lothar, refused his allegiance, and war broke out in Bavaria and Saxony. Conrad deprived Henry of the duchy of Saxony and gave it to Albert I (the Bear). Henry died in October 1139, and Conrad defeated Henry’s brother Welf at Weinsberg in December 1140; peace with the Welf family followed at Frankfurt in May 1142. In spite of this peace the rivalry of the Welfs and the Hohenstaufen dominated German history for the rest of the century.

The solitary success amid the general disorder in the empire was Conrad’s expedition into Bohemia in 1142, where he restored his brother-in-law Vladislav II as prince. An attempt to perform the same service for another brother-in-law, the Polish prince Władysław, failed. There was great disorder in Saxony, Bavaria, and Burgundy.

In December 1146 Conrad took the cross, secured the election and coronation of his young son Henry as his successor, appointed Henry I, archbishop of Mainz, as his son’s guardian, and, in the autumn of 1147, set out for Palestine on the Second Crusade. He left Palestine in September 1148 and passed the winter at Constantinople, where he consolidated an alliance with the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus for an attack on Roger II, king of Sicily, who had won considerable authority on the mainland and refused to recognize the German king. Later the news that Roger had allied himself with Louis VII of France and with Welf of Bavaria forced Conrad to hurry back to Germany. Unable to visit Rome, he never received the imperial crown. He designated as his successor his nephew Frederick III, duke of Swabia, afterward the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.